As for pictures, if I'm not using my own work, I seek photos under free public licenses.  In today's post, however, I use one photo without permission (because I have no idea how to get permission).  But then I mangle it beyond recognition in the pursuit of design, so I'm not sure where copyright law falls on that one!  Nevertheless, I still do my best to credit the originator and link back. 

Now that I quilt, I see quilt patterns everywhere. Like in the pebble-mosaic walkways of the Lan Su Chinese Garden in Portland, Oregon!  Incidentally, that garden is beautiful, but in the interest of isolating patterns for blogging, I took some very boring pictures of it when I visited on November 15th, this year. 

Labeling quilts is an interesting topic for me.  Historically, labeling quilts was not the norm.  Some modern interpreters assume that the women of the past didn't think their work deserved credit, as this quote from Womenfolk.com exemplifies:

I hesitate, however, to argue motives from a lack of evidence.  We have positive evidence of makers marking their quilts in several instances, such as when making signature quilts as gifts or community projects, or when labeling a quilt for laundry purposes.  Even the source cited above, which claims women failed to label quilts because they thought their work unimportant, then goes on to describe an uptick in labeling when indelible inks came on the market.  Did women suddenly find their quilts important then? 

Unsigned quilts were exhibited at county fairs, shipped across the ocean as gifts, saved for generations, and described in letters.  Clearly they were not unimportant, even if they went unsigned.  So maybe there are other explanations for not signing.  Maybe the makers lived in smaller communities than we do today, and within those communities the people who mattered knew who made what.  Perhaps the makers didn't care about a hundred years down the line because they never expected their quilts to last that long! 

I am not happy with my lioness, for two reasons.  First, I think she's too plain.  Her yellow colors are similar to each other, and their saturation is similar to the blue sky.  And second, I already have a lion, and I want a greater variety of species.  So I look for stock photos of leopards and cheetahs, to see if their silhouettes and face shapes are similar enough to give my lioness a change of species.  What do you think? 

Where can you see lions?  ONLY IN KENYA! 

Remember the Weebl's Kenya flash animation?  It's on YouTube now, but I prefer it with the endless loop, for that original dorky charm!  When I was in Africa with my mom, I felt that song!  We were on the "Holy Crap.  Lions!  Tour"!  The funniest part was when I'd burst into the Kenya song, and my mom, thoroughly out of touch with the enthusiasms of the youth, would give me a baffled/amused look. 

Imagine me in a Serengeti campsite, taking this picture.  Behind the camera, my mom and I have just washed our clothes in a shared fountain and wait for them to dry over rocks.  As we sit and talk, we admire the birds.  The blue ones are superb starlings (Lamprotornis superbus).  I don't know what the smaller, brown ones are, nor what to call the bossy-looking fellow with legs like a Clydesdale horse!  In fact, it's the bossy one that prompts me to take the picture, because we've never seen him before.  However, the superb starlings are the ones which stick in my memory a decade later.  They are native to East Africa, where they gather everywhere in big groups.  The Xeno-Canto website collects their calls, so you can hear them sing!